AI doesn't need emotional intelligence — but AI-concerned leaders do

For business leaders, the question has shifted from "will we use AI?" to "how will we use it?" 

That sounds like an operational answer: choose the technology, set guidelines, train employees, automate processes, find efficiencies. But the technology is moving faster than the infrastructure supporting it, and that infrastructure is not only technological. It is human.

So leaders must ask a third question: how does AI change how I lead? Short answer: your AI investment is only as effective as your investment in the people who use it. We're not talking about your team's technical skills, but about how you prioritize their unique value and your connection with them. As technology becomes more intelligent, leaders need to become more human.

Much has been written about whether AI can show empathy or replace human connection. 

Here, we focus on a leader's emotional intelligence (EQ), which asks us to develop four capacities: self-awareness, self-management, awareness of others and relationship management. Each offers a lens for shaping your AI strategy.

Self-awareness

Before setting expectations for others, examine your own habits. What have you delegated to AI, and where does it make you better? How do you use the time you save? Where might you be using it to avoid something you're not yet good at, and which of your skills have atrophied? 

Then consider your outlook. Is AI a tool that gives you power or a threat to your value? Where are you uncomfortable with it, and how do you hope to use it in the future? What biases do you carry about people who use it differently than you do? 

This baseline lets you move forward with intention.

Self-management

Consider an executive who once blocked two hours to think through a strategy presentation. With AI, she can produce something in 30 minutes. That's attractive. But what happened to the other 90 minutes? Did AI eliminate unnecessary production time, or did it eliminate thinking time? Those are very different outcomes.

The better question isn't "How quickly can AI help me finish this?" It's "What human thinking does this work require from me before I turn to AI?"

Research from BetterUp Labs and Stanford's Social Media Lab suggests that agency and optimism shape how people adapt to AI. Their research identifies two mindsets: “Pilots,” who approach AI with greater agency and optimism, and “Passengers,” who tend to be more pessimistic and reluctant to use it. Pilots are 3.6x more productive and 3.1x more likely to stay with their organization

The shift starts with the mindset: "AI can maximize my potential, and I am capable of learning how." 

Don't become an automator who defaults to AI whether it fits or not. Become an intentional calibrator who adopts AI where it helps and protects human judgment where it matters, learning from and collaborating with it rather than outsourcing your thinking.

Awareness of others

Many employees are quietly asking: What's the business case for investing in people over AI? What contributions are uniquely human? As we've written previously, mattering is the confidence that what we contribute is both adding value and being valued. It fuels our ability to adapt and perform under pressure, and right now, this uncertainty is driving the workplace mattering down.

Start by checking in on how employees feel about their own AI mindsets: pilot or passenger? Then explore how they work with it. What is your process? Where does your thinking end and AI's contribution begin? How do you validate information? How does it help maximize your potential? 

These questions shift the conversation from policing AI to understanding how someone thinks with it, and they reinforce the unique human contribution each person makes.

Relationship management

McKinsey's 2025 Global Survey on the State of AI found that 88% of organizations use AI in at least one business function. Yet in a February National Bureau of Economic Research study of nearly 6,000 executives across four countries, nine in ten reported no impact on employment or productivity over the past three years. Even top executives averaged just 1.5 hours of AI use per week. Adoption is ubiquitous. Results are not.

Why? Many leaders deployed AI without agreeing on what it's for or how people should behave differently with it. The result is AI ‘workslop,’ AI-generated content that is all style and no substance and creates more work for others to fix. Encouragingly, research shows AI “workslop” is an environmental problem, not an individual character flaw.

Leaders who are winning on performance, wellbeing and mattering set the right conditions. They define how team members should use AI and what "quality" means. They frame AI as a tool for growth, not a mandate that "more is better." They encourage experimentation. They prioritize human connection, because while AI may replace performance tracking, it cannot replace check-ins, feedback and development. They reinvest time savings in people, not tasks. And they lean into curiosity, which drives clear accountability.

The leadership standard

AI can remove unnecessary steps, analyze information, personalize routine communications, accelerate research and expand what organizations can accomplish. The answer isn't to resist it, nor to surrender our thinking and human value to it. It's to be intentional about how humans and AI work together, and that starts with leadership.

AI doesn't need emotional intelligence to transform your company. You do. Efficiency isn't effectiveness. Output isn't thinking. And AI fluency isn't leadership.